Review | Enrique Polanco is a...

Generated on 2020-10-22 23:05:41

Result #1

Enrique Polanco is a sculptor. He works in a zone where complexity is expressed with simple means and contradiction lives together with direct metaphors. Polanco works in a variety of materials, exploring stone, wood, ceramic, concrete, plaster and more. His work is also an exploration of space and form and contains multitudes of surrealist and archeological references with the intent of exploring his interests, often geometric, sexual and into the various themes through sculpture's history. Here, his work, almost as in his earlier works, is again more a synthesis of materials and less a reflection on them.Like Polanco, Lee and Renfrow are all artists who are interested in the intersection of material and abstraction. Lee brings together a degree of painted, sculptural and painted form and Renfrow makes uses of stone, wood and painted fiberglass. Renfrow brings together a meticulous abstraction and a production of forms that are complex, informal, and frequently ancillary. Her colors and forms are almost like words, and they are open to other interpretations. Renfrow's coloristic sense is that of a skin and she works with it as a formal structure. Her figures have a playful quality and her work has a sensual quality. But Renfrow is not an easy colorist; she works with acrylic and metal powder and alkyd to achieve her surfaces. In fact, this body of work looks as much like art as it does, for example, as much as one might expect, as wood. Yet it is not the crudeness of the material—particularly the rough surface—that bothers her. She is also concerned with the relationships between color and her sculptural forms. Renfrow uses light, paint and materials in a fashion which seems entirely her own. She seems to be exploring a range of approaches which is at once intellectual, emotive and intuitive. This range of approach includes her use of ornamentation and her visualization of space, the pictorial space of the surface. She does this with an almost analytical rigor, like an objective test of the work's status as a form. The works which she creates are at once abstract and material. The abstract work's relation to the material is a counterpoint to it, and the abstract works relationship to the material is already a relationship.

Result #2

Enrique Polanco is a sculptor. He works in a zone where complexity is expressed with simple means and contradiction lives together with direct metaphors. Polanco works in a variety of materials, exploring stone, wood, ceramic, concrete, plaster and more. His work is also an exploration of space and form and contains multitudes of surrealist and archeological references with the intent of exploring his interests, often geometric, sexual and into the various themes through sculpture's history. The Museum of Contemporary Art presents only one of the pieces shown in this show: a small carved block of ivory with numerous materials included—wood, bronze, glass, silver, diamond, bronze, iron, gypsum, concrete and feathers. The ivory's carved shape stands like a beautiful temple. The metal surrounding the block is clear, shiny, black and suggests a sense of security. Polanco creates a quality of geometry, but with the sense of freedom and freedom of movement that can be found in the unknown.The wood panel has been a common element in most of Polancos work, with many pieces consisting of piles of different materials that are arranged in a column. This kind of sculpture has often been associated with abstract expressionist forms, but Polanco deals with the beautiful, which finds a parallel in the intricately intricate patterns of trees and leaves on the surface of his sculpture. The piles of wood, sometimes with gems attached, and the arrangement of the pieces makes the sculptures a series, a series of more or less discrete units. The viewer has to follow the individual stacking and stacking of individual parts to complete each piece, or else to make a point of getting lost in the detail of the pieces, like the original prehistoric stone, the ancient stones. There is an emotional logic in this form of sculpture that is present throughout the work. However, there is a strong formal language in Polancos pieces. He uses clear colors, the smallest and blackest ones, to define and structure the accumulation of individual elements. These colors have a peculiar importance in his work: they serve to control the gradations of light, the shadows cast upon the individual piece of wood and the three-dimensional space they are in relationship to. The color has a sculptural quality that is emphasized by the fact that Polanco applies it liberally, without any coverage of any substance, and that the surface is an oil finish.

Result #3

Enrique Polanco is a sculptor. He works in a zone where complexity is expressed with simple means and contradiction lives together with direct metaphors. Polanco works in a variety of materials, exploring stone, wood, ceramic, concrete, plaster and more. His work is also an exploration of space and form and contains multitudes of surrealist and archeological references with the intent of exploring his interests, often geometric, sexual and into the various themes through sculpture's history. His recent show was a revelation; a work with no small hint of whimsy and one of the most sophisticated in his recent work.In this show Polanco uses several materials; powdery stone powder, crushed red stone powder, powdery sand, crushed plaster and plaster and again, powdery stone powder, crushed stone powder and plaster and the plaster fragments. He uses a great variety of textures to transform a large area of space into small rooms with light, space-like and rich textures. The process is almost imperceptible and so is the work itself.Pavlatis addition to this show was a massive installation. From the walls of the gallery a giant image of the sun and its rays spread out; above this huge image, floating on a dark, blue-black-filled sky, was a pair of images, one on a black-painted wall and one on the floor. The image on the wall was of a chair; this chair, as it were, was on the floor. The image on the floor was of a chair and its image was of a large female figure, and above this, a chair on the floor. This situation, it was clear, was not a simple case of sitting on the chair but rather a stand-in for the sun. In this work, the figure/chair relation was made explicit by the black-painted floor covering of the large piece. The photograph of a chair taken from a room in which Polanco was looking at a mountain in Central Park was a personal reference to the artist and the chair's place in a private psyche was made explicit through the photographic process.The image on the floor consisted of large stones, crushed and put in a vacuum-formed crate. It was reproduced on the crate with powdery sand on the floor. The piece could be seen as a frame in the process of demolition of a work and a reminder of the process of formalism.

Result #4

His pieces include rather than a dense, formal subject matter, but a strong formal unity, a geometric, textural rhythm that is the driving force of the whole.

Result #5

The exhibition includes paintings, drawings, photographs and a wall hanging entitled San Pissarro de la Guernica, 1987. It is one of the most successful works in this group, a series of various pieces of stone that have been reinstalled in a new setting in which they develop a new order. The setting is a solid, but low-ceilinged, stone-granite architecture. It has been reinforced with several horizontal steel bars that create a temporary support for the sculpture. This helps in establishing the temporary scale of the piece, as well as its relationship to the wall.Polanco's work, especially the sculptures, remains visionary and unpredictable. It is a challenging, yet lyrical work.